Venezuela discovery

Just when I thought I had every Hotel Bristol in the world, I stumbled upon the Hotel Bristol in Barinas, in Venezuela. I should have known – it has been there since two Italian immigrants put up the money in 1979, opening the doors in 1981. It is a three star hotel with 69 rooms and conference facilities. Barinas is in the west of the country, capital of the vast tropical plain called Los Llanos, and has a population of around 250,000. I came across it on Twitter. It was following one person, and had one follower. Now it has two. I have added it to the list of All Bristol Hotels

New EU Thon is not a Bristol

A new Thon hotel is opening in the European Quarter of Brussels later this month, but it won't be another Bristol. Olav Thon, the colourful Norwegian property billionaire, already has three hotels called Bristol, one of them in Brussels – the Hotel Bristol Stephanie, which he bought in 1995. His first hotel acquisition was the historic Hotel Bristol in Oslo (pictured) in 1974, and in 1998 he bought the Hotel Bristol in Bergen. The new hotel in Brussels, the Thon EU, has 405 rooms, which will use mobile phone keys.

The wealthy Mr Thon is reported to have once said that one day he would like to take over the Hilton Hotel chain, which would simply be rebranded as Hilthon hotels.

Jazz on a Cold Winter's Night, a story from High Times at the Hotel Bristol, is set in the Oslo Bristol.

Is this the fifth Bristol Hotel in Poland?

The new Bristol Hotel in Rzeszow (see previous post) is, as far as I know, the fifth hotel in Poland to take the name. The others are in Bytom, Kielce, Tarnow, Warsaw.


The Warsaw Bristol is best known, and features in Lady Thatcher's Finest Hour, one of the stories in High Times at the Hotel Bristol. Revitalised following the fall of the Iron Curtain, the Bristol was re-opened in 1993 by Margaret Thatcher, and the story is based on this event. She and her husband Denis stayed in the palatial Paderewski suite. Ignacy Paderewski, the piano-playing prime minister, was co-founder of the hotel, which opened in 1901. After independence in 1918, the first government meetings were held here. 

Bristol will be Polish city's first 5-star hotel

Another new Bristol Hotel – this time it's being built in Rzeszow, a county town in the south of Poland. Near the market square (pictured), it will be the first 5-star hotel in Rzeszow, with 140 rooms, conference facilities and restaurants. Scheduled to open by the end of 2012, it is already looking for a Director General and a Head of Sales and Marketing. The company behind the project is Aksjon Sp, whose other hotels include the Aurora on the Baltic coast at Miedzyzdrojach - it clearly likes international hotel names.

Le Bristol voted one of eight Palace hotels

Hôtel Le Bristol in Paris is often referred to as one of the city's top "palace' hotels, a denomination created in 2009. Now the title is official. Four hotels in Paris and four others in the rest of France have been designated "Palace" hotels. The award was decided by a jury headed by the writer and member of the French Acdemy, Dominique Fernandez, and included members of the media, architecture, and hotel groups.

The Paris Hotels are:
• Le Hôtel Bristol, owned by Oetker Collection
• Le Meurice, part of the Dorchester Collection
• Park Hyatt Paris Vendome, owned by the Hyatt family
• Plaza Athenée, also part of the Dorchester Collection (their two other top Paris hotels, the Ritz and George V, failed to make the Palace grade) 

Outside Paris:
• Biarritz: L'Hôtel du Palais Biaritz (pictured above), the only one actually built as a royal palace, for the Empress Eugenie
• Courchevel: Cheval Blanc, owned by LVMH, and Les Aireilles, owned by Stephan Courbit, whose superyacht sank in the Aegean last month.

• Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat: Grand Hôtel Cap Ferrat, bought by Len Blavatnik, a Russian billionaire with American citizenship living in London, in 2008. Does he still own it?

Each hotel will receive a special plaque. The first one was fixed onto the front of the Paris Bristol in the presence of Tourism minister Frederic Lefebvre.

Angelina Jolie hosts premier meal in Sarajevo Bristol

To celebrate the premier of her film In the Land of Blood and Honey, on February 14, director Angelina Jolie and her husband Brad Pitt entertained around 30 guests to dinner at the Hotel Bristol in Sarajevo where they were staying. The meal included traditional Bosnian dishes and was organised by the hotel's manager, Nermin Hodzic and chef Debartolijem Moreno. The 4-star Hotel Bristol reopened in June 2011, and was reported in Hotel Bristol News.  

The Bristol Hotel on Rab Island

Guests at the sumptuous waterside four-star Hotel Arbiana on the Croatian island of Rab may wonder how the Cocktail Bar Bristol got its name. The fact is that when the hotel was built in 1932, it was called the Bristol. Four years later, Wallis Simpson and the Prince of Wales arrived on the island and bathed naked on a discreet beach, establishing the island's reputation for naturism. Their voyage is told in "High Noon for the King's Moll", a chapter in High Times at the Hotel Bristol. The chapter can be read online. The hotel's name changed during the Communist years, though not all Bristols were erradicated in Yugoslavia. In Skopje, Macedonia, the Bristol, built in the 1924, is still in business. The only hotel in the street to survive the 1963 earthquake, it features in the "A Motoring Lesson from Macedonia". The story can be heard on YouTube.